LBS FOOTPRINTS
Resilience in Times of Crisis & Uncertainties 10 Practices that Work Tunde Ekpekurede
"Oh! mama This choice I made didn't work out the way I thought it would, now I'm hurting" - Lucky Dube The woman who Lucky Dube had told his mama was the best woman in the world, turned out not to be so. This is the stark reality of life – our choices never always turn out to be what we expected. The financial projections never always fall into line at the end of the year; the project delivery timeline never really turns out to be what we expected; the perfect job never really turns out to be what we expected; the new investment never really yields as much as it was expected to; even the weather projections often differ from what we anticipate. What does all this mean when we are confronted with the many challenges of life? It tells us that we need an approach to life different from the fixed mindset that we often use to engage in life. We need to engage life with an attitude that says we will find a way to our destination no matter what, or else we will redefine our destination. An attitude that has an inbuilt ability to rebound when our predictions fail to align with reality – and really, many of our predictions hardly ever go the way we planned. This attitude of mind is called resilience.
First Issue 2021
Resilience is the ability to bounce back when confronted by a setback. It is a quality of mind possessed by every champion, whether in life or in business. To quote Dean Becker of Adaptive Learning, "More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That is true in the cancer ward, it's true in the Olympics, and it's true in the boardroom." "More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That is true in the cancer ward, it's true in the Olympics, and it's true in the boardroom." Since January 2020, resilience has become a buzz word in many academic literatures and for the right reason. Covid - 19 brought with it one of the most unexpected shocks in recent business history. This singular disruption has led to very severe economic, social, political, and health consequences on a global scale. These devastations notwithstanding, a crisis is not something that should be left to waste. The consequences and disruptions already experienced will be of no account if lessons are not learned and appropriate changes to how we engage with the future built into our organizational or personal thinking. Below, I will recount the story of the famous Andes flight, a flight that should have lasted under 3 hours that took 72 days with much death and pain in its troll. Much of the material in the story that follow have been taken from the books "ALIVE" by Piers Paul Reid and "MIRACLE IN THE ANDES" by Nando Parrado. The Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 – The 72 DAYS FLIGHT FROM URUGUAY TO ARGENTINA On 13 October 1972, a chartered Uruguayan Air Force plane was flying over the Andes carrying the Old Christians Club rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, to play a match in Santiago, Chile. Unfortunately, due to cloud cover, the pilot, unaware that he was flying below the height of the Andes mountains crashed into the Andes. The plane clipped the peak at 4,200 metres (13,800 ft), severing the right wing, which was thrown back with such force that it cut off the vertical stabilizer, leaving a gaping hole in the rear of the fuselage. The plane then clipped a second peak which severed the left wing and left the plane as just a fuselage flying through the air. The fuselage hit the ground and slid down a steep mountain
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